


Until The End, That's How It'll Be

by angeloncewas



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Ghostbur, Inspired by Music, Internal Monologue, Mentioned Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Toby Smith | Tubbo, Sad TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), They all need hugs, Unreliable Narrator, Wilbur Soot Needs a Hug, Wilbur Soot-centric, i tried so hard to stay in character, other smp characters mentioned, pre-exile, saint bernard - lincoln, wilbur hears voices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27952925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas
Summary: Ghostbur spends most of his time in his own mind and Tommy spends most of his time causing trouble. With Tubbo's decision looming over them, they realize there's really just one thing that they have in common.-Wilbur’s ghost knows his hands now are far from capable; they can only just barely carry the things he wants to keep close to him.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Kudos: 136





	Until The End, That's How It'll Be

**Author's Note:**

> this came to me at 3 a.m. and it probably shows. it's not canon, but i tried to make it flow together in a way that could be/could've been real, if that makes sense. sorry if it's ooc, i worked very hard on the dialogue
> 
> aspects of the song are interwoven throughout the scene even where i didn't use a quote (allusions, parallels, etc) so i recommend listening to it

* * *

_Hung_ _pictures of patron saints_ _up on my wall_

 _To remind me_ _that I am a fool_

 _Tell me_ _where I came from, what I will always be:_

* * *

“He’s trying to exile me!”

Tommy’s voice is as loud as ever, echoing around the sewer, but there’s a note of desperation in it, something sharp and piercing, that Wilbur’s ghost finds oddly familiar. The word “ _exile”_ runs laps around his head, a vaguely familiar voice repeating it back to him. He does his best to shake it off and focuses back on his guest.

“Who is?”

“Tubbo. Dream told him to and he’s actually considering it, Wilbur.”

“Ghostbur,” he corrects, only partially joking. He isn’t not sure why they’re all so hesitant to call him what he is, but he’d rather not cause trouble, so he doesn’t press the matter. Tommy just doesn’t respond, walking through the doorway to the library and staring at the tall shelves that line the walls, books placed in no discernable order. It’s a bit of a strange collection, from Quackity’s pristine joke book to the crumbling spine of the Declaration of Independance, but they all tell a story; one that _Wilbur_ isn’t exactly a part of anymore.

“Will the books not get wet or something?” Tommy asks him abruptly, blue eyes piercing through his wisp of a body.

“No, they’re fine.”

Tommy nods slowly, but Wilbur’s not sure of the validity of his answer. He doesn’t even know if he’d notice if they did. His awareness has been worse than usual lately. There’s large gaps in his memory from yesterday for some reason; he can’t imagine it has anything to do with all the stuff he’s forgotten from before, but he can’t remember what actually happened.

_You tried to remember something,_ a voice in his head, one of the kind ones, supplies only semi-helpfully. Everything seems to blur and distort here, his only sunlight peeking through the metal grate in the front hallway and his only guests those with something bitter behind their gaze.

“Tubbo’s lost it.” Tommy continues. He’s shaking a little, but Wilbur can’t tell if it’s from the anger that coats his every word or the bitter cold that makes its way into his home no matter how much he fuels the fire. “The power’s gotten to his head. He thinks he’s the new Schlatt or something.”

Tommy spits the word _Schlatt_ out like poison onto Wilbur’s stone flooring and something inside of him flickers again. _Exile. Schlatt. Power. Lost._ His hands involuntarily find the blue in his inventory and some of it pours out of his hands as he clutches it; Tommy picks the extra pieces up silently.

“Well... have you talked to him about it?”

“Of course I did!” Tommy’s voice pitches higher, something indignant creeping into his tone. “Told him he couldn’t be the guy if he tried.”

 _They’re always angry at me,_ Wilbur thinks.

 _Why would they not be?_ another voice replies. A name floats around his subconscious, but it’s gone before he can grab onto it and his mind is murky once more.

“And what did he say?” he finally asks aloud. 

“He said- he said I’d never be you.”

Tommy’s expression scrunches up a little at his own words, like they’re something meant to be saddening, and Wilbur struggles to understand.

He’s fond of his home and his work; proud in a quiet way, a whisper of an emotion that tucks him into bed at night when he feels the urge to act as though he still needs sleep. He’s done his best to help make L’manberg beautiful, and though few of its citizens speak to him and even less meet his eyes, they all seem pleased with the renovations. 

Tommy doesn’t strike him as the type to be content with that. Not the loud soldier who would do anything for what was important to him. Tommy is the kind of person who makes you look at him when he’s speaking. Wilbur isn’t sure if he even counts as a person. 

That thought hits some chord inside of him, reverberates and echoes around his mind. For a second he almost can feel something like pain again, an ache in his limbs and rushing noise in his ears. He makes himself stop.

“From what Philza told me… isn’t that a good thing?”

“Wilbur, you were…” Tommy sighs, shifts, paces. There’s a story here, Wilbur knows. It’s the one they’re always hiding from him. The one he asks them to hide. Thinking about it makes him feel like he’s ingested a weakness potion, all fatigue down to his bones. It makes the company he keeps in his mind grow louder, he can never discern what they’re saying when they try to tell him about the past.

Tommy’s whole body stills suddenly, as though all his energy has been wound up. There’s visible tightness in his shoulders and the set of his jaw and he mutters something to himself.

“Phil said I… took a turn?” Wilbur interjects, something in him desperate to stop Tommy’s obvious inner turmoil.

Tommy makes a small noise of assent, seemingly relieved by Wilbur’s words. He rolls his shoulders back and down before starting to pace the room again. “Yeah, I reckon that’s a good way of putting it. You took a turn, some time- some time after the election. Before that happened though, I did want to be like you.” Tommy’s expression is soft, like he’s given Wilbur something, but Wilbur doesn’t understand. There’s so much that he’s missing, he’s reading the final pages of a book with no beginning. “I don’t think you wanted me to be, but I did.” 

Something about this conversation is chipping away at Wilbur, a stone pickaxe against an obsidian wall; it cracks and crumbles, but nothing ever seems to break through. He can’t remember any of this, he only remembers the revolution through the eyes of a stranger. It’s his own voice that shouts over all the others, but it’s also not, not at all.

_Independence or death._

One of the voices in his head seems to laugh at him. _Wilbur got both._

 _What will Tommy get?_ he asks back, but is met with only the silence of his own thoughts.

“Tell me something I don’t know Tommy,” Wilbur offers suddenly. 

_This feels like a bad idea._ Another voice.

 _It will help Tommy._ The kind one, from before.

“About Wilbur. Or you. Something I wouldn’t remember.” His faceless companions are loud today, but they always are when there’s people around. Especially Tommy, whom they all seem to have different opinions on.

“You never- You- You never-” Tommy stops walking and inhales deeply. “You never want to talk about that stuff.”

Wilbur shrugs. He checks the blue in his inventory reflexively and then smiles at Tommy in a way he hopes is encouraging. _Maybe Tommy would be happier if I was more like Wilbur was._

Tommy’s eyes flutter shut as he thinks, muttering a word here and there and shaking his head intermittently. Wilbur knows he’s trying to think of a memory that won’t be shut down, one that doesn’t talk about Alivebur so that the ghost won’t change the subject. To be fair, it is what he would prefer.

“You mentioned Schlatt before and you seemed- you seemed very angry. Maybe start there?” he offers. He’s trying to be helpful, he’s trying to understand the meaning between the pauses in Tommy’s speech and the small gaps in his regular expression. Tommy’s not illusive by any means, or even subtle, but Wilbur doesn’t have enough information to reach a conclusion, much less one that explains anything other than Tommy’s presence in his home.

_This was Wilbur’s right-hand-man,_ he thinks. _And now_ **_his_ ** _right-hand-man wants him gone._ L’manberg’s conflicts are of little interest to him nowadays, but he can understand how that must be difficult; knowing that someone you trusted so much has turned their back on you.

“I don’t know about that one…” Tommy says, hesitant. Wilbur hands him some more blue and he looks at it and sighs. “Alright. Schlatt was, well, he was a very bad man. He got a lot of power and he didn’t like me or you- or uh, Wilbur when he was alive. He might’ve liked you.” Tommy’s laugh sounds hoarse, as though he’s been shouting, but he swallows hard and presses on. “He ruined everything. Everything. All of this is because of him.”

Wilbur is surprised. “I thought I ruined everything.”

“Most things were kind of a- kind of a group effort.”

Tommy talks about the parts Wilbur doesn't remember like a particularly difficult game of chess. Too many moving parts, too much back-and-forth in the black and white. 

_Wilbur was the king,_ he thinks. _The winner of the election. Schlatt must’ve been an opponent’s king._

“Did you know the king is the weakest chess piece?” he hears himself ask.

“What?”

“Nothing, nevermind.” 

_The game is over now anyway,_ a voice reminds him harshly. 

_I know_ , he replies, unfailingly soothing, even to the strangers who speak only to him.

He doesn’t, though, not really. He can’t remember when it ended or when all the players changed, when Eret’s name went from something to be hated, written into the very foundation of L’manberg, to something people toss out on the street as a greeting. He remembers saying things he must’ve believed in at the time, and he remembers believing things he never told anyone, but none of it adds up to now, not even close.

Tommy stares at the brewing stands on the shelf and the words seem to tumble out of his mouth: a river with a broken dam, flooding the little room they stand in. “It’s just so stupid Will! Ever since day one it’s been me and Tubbo together against Dream. Even when I agreed to follow you, I dragged Tubbo along with me because we were partners. We almost left L’manberg behind. I almost left you and everyone else for him, Wilbur. But now you’re a ghost. And no one seems to remember or care that I stayed and died in the war- the only reason they’re not all under Dream’s fat, ugly, green thumb.”

Tommy has started pacing again and it agitates Wilbur, but he can tell Tommy is at the edge of something, a wobbly ledge with danger in any direction, so he doesn’t comment on it. He resists the urge to give him something, it’s not as though he has much to offer. 

“Tubbo is in the White House ‘deciding my fate.’ I seriously could end up exiled. I can’t do that again. I’d be completely alone this time! This all started because of my discs and now they want me to let those discs go, but I can’t. It won’t have been worth anything if I just give up now. And I get it, war was horrible, but what about me? I don’t get it. I don’t know what to do.” Tommy lets out a shuddering breath and stops his frantic movements, all the fight seeming to give out. His fingers find the switch on the small lamp above Wilbur’s bed and it flickers on and off in some sort of haphazard pattern.

The words _“exile”_ and “ _again_ ” were picked up by the voices in Wilbur’s head, and they toss them around and tug at them till he feels a bit like screaming. Even without their torrent of input, he’s not sure what to do with Tommy’s words, or even just the space he takes up in Wilbur’s home, which suddenly feels like too much.

 _Alivebur would have a speech prepared,_ he realizes. _Something inspiring, dripping with metaphor and importance._ He knows the look Tommy would’ve given the man, the one that spells out something between exasperation and awe. Tommy would’ve talked over it too, claiming he knew better, but he’d ultimately go silent, some small safety in the way he could rest assured it was in capable hands. Wilbur’s ghost knows his hands now are far from capable; they can only just barely carry the things he wants to keep close to him. 

Which means everything is in Tommy’s hands. Hands that, standing under a crane in a haunted country, a destroyed remnant of a dead man’s dream, he looks as though he doesn't know what to do with.

The light keeps flickering like a distress signal. The last call of a sinking ship.

_Don’t worry about Tommy,_ one of the voices urges. It’s uncomfortably clear, cutting through the static hum of all the others, and though he knows it’s trying to help him, he refuses. He can’t just “not worry _”_ about Tommy. Not now.

He tries to remember something that could help, much to the noisy chagrin of those who’ve made his subconscious their place to rest. He remembers L’manberg’s creation, he always has, but this time the backdrop of the images blur to focus on Tommy. A partner-in-crime, a fighter who couldn’t stay silent, a boy with boundless energy and a fire in his eyes. 

Wilbur makes eye contact with said boy, and though he smiles, even the voices mutter agreement when he takes note of how tired Tommy looks. For a second, Wilbur can’t help but wonder if his reflection, if he had one, would look like Tommy does. Something dark lurking in an expressive face. A quiet despair that’s so difficult to hide, no matter how skilled you are at lying.

_Tommy’s never been good at that._

The silence is uncomfortable now, at least it appears to be for Tommy, who’s stopped his actions entirely and sits on the edge of the bed, limbs poised like he’s ready to bolt.

“I think- I think I’ll come with you.” Wilbur says, mildly.

“You what?”

“I’ll come with you. If you get exiled.”

Tommy sputters. “Wh- Why- Why? Why would you do that?”

“Neither of us will be missed,” Wilbur replies. His voice comes out small and sure, the soft acceptance in it running parallel to the anger that seems to hum through Tommy. Wilbur turns before he can see the boy’s face fall, struggling to think of an exception.

Fundy, his son, the fox, the one who presses him on the past as though he hopes he can make the ghost snap. Phil, his father, on adventures with Technoblade, the sword that killed Wilbur strapped to his side. _Nikki,_ a name he cannot put a face to, but one that makes the voices droop like wilting flowers for some reason. They are in his book of Wilbur’s memories, the one he cannot remember writing, but they are also not who stands in his house, lacing and unlacing his fingers together with anxiety too forceful to disguise behind any confidence.

 _None of them care about you,_ a voice sneers.

 _They probably did, once,_ he answers. _Then Wilbur ruined everything._

He checks his storage; he’s got so much blue, he’s not sure how he’s going to bring it all with him when they go wherever Dream decides.

“You’re right.” Tommy’s voice is shockingly collected and Wilbur turns to face him again. “Ghostbur, d’y’know what Wilbur said it means,” he asks quietly, “when a man has nothing to lose?”

The ghost doesn't. “What, Tommy?”

His ocean eyes shine with grim determination through the obvious exhaustion that clouds his face. “It means we can do what we want.”

* * *

_You always said how you loved dogs_

_I don't know if I count, but I'm trying my best_

_When I'm howling and barking these songs_

* * *


End file.
